Pudlo Pudlat

Canadian, 1916–1992

Loon in Open Water, 1984

lithograph on paper, 11/40

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Pudlo Pudlat began drawing in 1960 and his work was included in most of the Cape Dorset print collections until his death 32 years later. A print, Aeroplane (1976), was reproduced on a Canadian postage stamp in 1978. With its focus on modern technology, the print attracted much attention, and Pudlo’s work continued to integrate technology with Inuit themes in the years that followed. A major retrospective exhibition, Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, organized by the National Gallery of Canada in 1990, brought national attention to the innovation and development of the artist’s body of work. In the early 1980s, his designs, such as this loon, became flatter, abstracted, and enlarged to fill the picture plane. He also explored movement, achieved in this work through a spray of lines denoting rushing water as the bird lands.